The Last Embrace (3 page)

The couple swept into a limousine. Well, if she was going to track down a missing starlet, she might as well get used to the local fauna. As fans dispersed, Lily asked a schoolgirl who the woman was.

The girl presented her autograph book.
To Betsy,
the scrawled signature read,
with love from Gene Tierney.

Unfazed, the porter carried her suitcase past the jacarandas and palms to a waiting taxi. Lily tipped him, wondering if fifty cents was too much. She had no idea anymore.

“Where to, miss?” said the driver, a small wiry man.

Lily wanted to find a hotel and freshen up. With any luck, Doreen had come home and Lily could get right back on the train to New York.

But what if Doreen was still missing? Lily imagined tracking Joseph’s sister down to some producer’s yacht or Beverly Hills hideaway. Maybe she didn’t want to be found. Lily thrust away darker possibilities. This was L.A., her childhood home, not some bombed-out European city teeming with war criminals, political intrigue, and refugees.

Suddenly Lily felt a keen desire to see the house where she’d grown up.

“Please take me to Mar Vista,” she told the cabbie.

The driver adjusted his hat and they took off.

Los Angeles was clean and prosperous, bristling with brawny energy and determination. Its downtown streets bore no signs of bombs or bullets. The people were tall and well fed, everyone driving big shiny cars. Many wore dark shades like movie stars to ward off sunlight so bright it hurt her eyes.

“Your first visit?” the cabbie asked.

“I grew up here.”

The cabbie had his elbow out the window, his arm tanned a chestnut brown.

“It’s just that you have a foreign look about you.”

Lily gave a rueful smile. “I’ve been living in Europe for five years.”

“We’re letting too many of those people in, you ask me. The war’s over now, they should all go back home.”

Lily wondered if Los Angeles had become more provincial in her absence or if she had grown more cosmopolitan.

The cab passed Echo Park Lake. Lily knew he was taking her the long way, but she didn’t care. The rows of palm trees saluting the sky, the fountains jetting up, the merrymakers in paddleboats making a circuit as the sun reflected off the water—she’d missed this. A tent was pitched on the grass. Lily saw a man carrying a plate of food duck inside the flap. Two more tents sprang into view, then a cluster.

“Is that a Boy Scout campout?”

The cabbie laughed. “You
have
been gone awhile. Those are servicemen. Waiting for housing the government promised.”

“They live in the park?” Lily was horrified.

The cabbie gave a dismissive wave. “Just for a coupla days. It’s a protest. But there’re thousands like ’em in Quonset huts and trailers, even tents on the beach.”

“Goodness.”

Lily was relieved to see that the Art Deco observatory still nestled into the hills of Griffith Park, a familiar white landmark amid the sun-scorched brush. Then the Hollywood sign came into view. Lily felt a rush of dismay. The
H
had collapsed and the last four letters that used to lean drunkenly were gone altogether, a discarded relic in a city where history was as malleable as movie sets.

The cab turned south, then west onto Wilshire. Above her, a billboard for Sunbeam electric mixers showed a mother serving cookies to her children in a sparkly kitchen. Lily felt she’d emerged from a drab black-and-white world into Technicolor where everything was both familiar and oddly foreign.

Soon they were in Hancock Park, the bastion of old moneyed Los Angeles where her wealthy relatives lived. The Ainsworths. She’d never met them. Her grandfather Clement Ainsworth had disowned his beautiful daughter for marrying an immigrant musician instead of one of the society boys he’d handpicked for her.

A year later, Lily’s mother had died giving birth to her and her father’s grief had only hardened the estrangement. Lily didn’t care; she was devoted to her gentle, cultured father, who spoke five languages and eked out a living with piano lessons and odd studio jobs. When he developed heart disease twelve years later, it might have gone badly for Lily if her mother’s sister Sylvia Ainsworth hadn’t materialized on their doorstep. After living in Europe most of her life, she’d returned home as Hitler consolidated power and promised Lily’s dying father to provide her with a home.

Lily clung like a limpet to her sophisticated new aunt, embracing her exuberance, sense of humor, and conviction that anything was possible if one aimed high and wore good shoes. After high school, Lily enrolled at Vassar College because it was Sylvia’s alma mater. Then, when she was nineteen, her beloved aunt had died. Desperate to stay in school—the only home she had left—Lily used Aunt Sylvia’s inheritance to finish college and keep pace with a clique of privileged new friends. When the money ran out, she learned stenography and worked secretarial jobs, spinning elaborate lies about a hectic social life to mask the true state of her finances. It couldn’t have gone on indefinitely, but already Lily was cultivating a gift for dissembling.

By that time, World War II was raging. When a Vassar professor learned she could take dictation at two hundred words a minute and spoke French and German, he recommended her to the new Office of Strategic Services. The OSS recruiter was delighted to learn she had no family and could go anywhere the job required. Soon after graduation in 1944, she made a final trip to Los Angeles to close out accounts, then took the train to Washington and reported for duty.

To her surprise, Lily enjoyed learning how to shadow people, use firearms, steam open letters, and crack safes. She took to the rough-and-tumble of OSS life, the tours of duty in Athens, Berlin, and Berne, even meeting the great spymaster Allen Dulles himself. There was a swashbuckling feel to the work that she thrilled to, a Great Cause to sacrifice for, and she grew used to bivouacking in a crumbling castle outside Cologne one month, a requisitioned apartment in Marburg the next. She was good at getting people to confide in her, knew when to shut up and listen, could ferret out sensitive information with a smile. She thrived on the male attention, swore and told jokes and blew smoke rings with the best of her colleagues, and no one ever suspected that she occasionally locked herself in the women’s room and sobbed, overwhelmed by all that she’d seen. In time, Lily learned to anesthetize her fears with booze and calm her night terrors in the arms of Joseph Croggan. In his unassailable midwestern decency, thousands of miles and an ocean from home, she thought she’d found a refuge and a new life. Instead, here she was, alone, adrift, and feeling ancient in her bones at twenty-six, back in L.A., a place she thought she’d left behind forever.

At Centinela, the cab turned and Lily gripped the seat and cried out. Her old block was gone. A bulldozer lumbered, grading the dirt where houses had once stood. At the edge of the lima bean fields where farmers had planted a windbreak of eucalyptus trees fifty years earlier, men with chain saws were hard at work. The denuded trunks lay like piles of bones.

Lily swallowed hard.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said, pulling out Doreen’s address. “Hollywood, please.”

T
he taxi pulled up to a two-story Spanish-style house set back from the street. The architect had supplied whimsical touches—leaded-glass windows, balconies, a high turret. Above the front door, an ornamental iron sign read
WILCOX BOARDINGHOUSE FOR YOUNG LADIES.

In the big unkempt garden, Lily saw fruit trees, bougainvilleas, giant birds-of-paradise with prehistoric orange and blue beaks, a pink hibiscus that had grown into a tree. Ivy wound around sycamore trunks like garlands and velvety blue morning glory vines climbed a trellis. Accustomed to the grays of northern Europe, where winter had already taken hold, Lily found the color intoxicating.

“Here we are.”

The cabbie turned, revealing a scar from mouth to ear. Lily blanched and he grinned, making the dead purple flesh pucker unpleasantly. “Okinawa,” he said, catching her stare. “But at least I made it home, which is more than some of my buddies.”

“Y-yes,” Lily stuttered, and tipped him a dollar.

“Bring young ladies here from time to time,” he said, depositing her suitcase. “Actresses, every one. But it’s an okay joint. Unlike some a them.” He tipped his hat. “Good luck in Hollywood,” he said, getting back into his car. “I’ll look for you on the silver screen.”

Don’t bother,
she wanted to call, annoyed that the cabbie had mistaken her for another starlet in the making. But he was already gone.

Lily walked up the flagstone steps, feeling the grounds stir, rustling and twittering in welcome. The familiar odor of sage hit her, perfumed and almost smoky. The smell of hiking trails and chaparral lashing her bare legs, the hot sun of her childhood.

Lily rapped the iron knocker three times against the heavy oak door. With a creak it swung open, revealing a middle-aged woman with hair pulled into a bun. She was rangy and long-limbed, with an unruly bosom that strained the seams of her pale yellow dress. A smell of perspiration and bleach came from her.

“What can I do for you?” the woman said, the grit of Oklahoma thick on her tongue. Her eyes dropped to Kitty’s feet, spied the suitcase. “We don’t have any rooms to let right now, though we…” Wiping her hands on her apron, the woman tilted her head. “We may have an opening at the end of the month.”

“Oh,” said Lily. “That’s not why…I mean…I’m a friend of the Croggan family. From Illinois…My name’s Lily Kessler. I’ve come to…” Lily’s eyes darted away. “So does that mean Doreen’s still missing?”

The woman stood, silhouetted in the doorway. Lily wondered why she didn’t invite her in. Her mind was clogged with cobwebs, sticky and sluggish after her long journey, and it troubled her that she couldn’t make out the woman’s face in the house’s shadows, where dim rooms receded into dusk, though it was high noon outside.

The woman pursed her lips. “You mean Kitty.”

Relieved, Lily nodded and launched into how Mrs. Croggan had sent her out to check on Doreen and make sure she was okay.

“Kitty isn’t here.”

“But has she come back?”

“No, she hasn’t.” The woman’s voice was flat, without inflection.

Lily felt a growing anxiety. The longer Doreen stayed missing, the worse the odds grew.

“In that case, perhaps I might speak with you and the boarders?”

The woman studied her.

“Her mother sent me,” Lily repeated. “I’ve come all the way from Illinois.”

The woman shifted, the floorboards creaking beneath her.

“The police…” Lily began, and the words appeared to have a magical effect.

“I suppose you might.” The woman opened the door wider. “I’m Mrs. Potter, the landlady. Won’t you come inside?”

She led Lily into the front parlor. Lily put her suitcase down and sat at the edge of a red sofa. A battered Steinway covered in knickknacks stood against the far wall. The coffee table held a Sears Roebuck catalogue, two well-thumbed
Movie Screen
magazines, and a chipped ceramic ashtray pilfered from Earl Carroll’s nightclub.

Mrs. Potter lowered herself into a caned chair. A sleek black cat padded into the room and crouched by her feet, tail twitching.

“Well, Miss Kessler, what would you like to know?”

Feminine laughter drifted from the back of the house, then a blast of song from a tinny radio. Mrs. Potter’s eyes flickered and her lips curved in annoyance. Lily smelled coffee and the tantalizing aroma of angel food cake. In Illinois, she would have been offered a meal by now. Surely something to drink.

“Please, Mrs. Potter. Couldn’t I talk to you and the boarders together? I’d like to meet them. I’m sure they’ve got some ideas of where Dor—er, Kitty might be.”

Mrs. Potter stared at her clenched white hands. “Very well. I’ll ask them into the parlor.”

She left the room, the cat trailing after her. Lily jumped up and followed.

“Maybe you could take me to where they are. I don’t want to disturb their coffee klatch.”

Lily wanted them to feel comfortable. It wasn’t a police interrogation, after all.

Mrs. Potter grabbed her arm. “Miss Kessler,” she said, “I run a respectable house.”

The cat brushed against her stockings and Lily felt the prickle of static electricity. Something angular jabbed the back of her neck. She turned and saw an iron wall sconce casting a thin watery light into the hallway.

Mrs. Potter’s eyes glinted. “We don’t have a curfew here, like some of the other places. I know what the studios expect of these girls, and it’s the devil’s own bargain. So long as they don’t bring it home, it’s none of my business.”

“I see,” said Lily, who wasn’t sure she did at all.

“If Kitty’s off somewhere improving her chances, it’s nobody’s business but her own.”

Mrs. Potter gave Lily’s arm an emphatic shake. “She’s an ambitious girl, our Miss Kitty. No bad habits. Never any money trouble. Rent’s paid up through the thirty-first. She’s not one of those as pays by the week.”

“Please let go of me,” Lily said.

Mrs. Potter’s hand fell to her side. She gave a simpering laugh. “Sometimes I get carried away. These girls get to be like daughters to me.”

Oh, so you’d prostitute your daughters for a Hollywood role?

There was an awkward silence and Lily feared she’d spoken out loud. Then Mrs. Potter said, “I suppose you’ll want to see her room.”

She started up the stairs, leaving Lily no choice but to follow. In the winding upstairs hallway, Lily heard a Victrola playing swing jazz. There were closed doors on either side. They walked along a faded carpet runner patterned in cabbage roses.

At the last door, Mrs. Potter paused.

“Kitty had the turret room,” she said. “I have a hard time letting it, the girls say it’s haunted. That’s nonsense, of course.”

Mrs. Potter’s eyes narrowed. “Now, before I open this door, do you have any proof you’re who you say you are? We can’t be too careful and there’s already been people snooping around, asking questions that are none of their business.”

“Who?”

“I don’t rightly know. I run them off when they don’t explain themselves. The only one I let in besides the police was the man from the studio, and he was polite and showed me ID.”

“What was his name?”

“Clarence Fletcher.”

“Did he take anything?”

“Not that I saw. And I only left him alone a minute when I went down to pay the dry cleaner’s.”

Ample time to shove a diary down his shirt, Lily thought.

“So the studio’s worried too?” she said.

Mrs. Potter spoke through gritted teeth. “Maybe the studio don’t know everything. Maybe she’s passing time with someone from
another
studio. So how about it?” She held out a hand.

Lily brought out a letter from Mrs. Croggan and her passport. The landlady examined the letter and flipped through the passport, absorbed in the colorful entry stamps of foreign nations.

“You been in a lot of Communist places.” She eyed Lily with sly interest.

“I was a government file clerk in the war.”

“Those stamps’re more recent than that. You sure you’re not a Red spy?”

No, I was a spy for our side.

“They kept me on after the German surrender. The Marshall Plan…I just got my discharge papers.”

The landlady dug a ring of keys out of her pocket. “I been up here once to make sure she wasn’t in bed, too sick to call out. And the police, they was here all of two minutes. Found no sign of foul play and left, not before the young one asked Louise to go out dancing.”

She turned the key and pushed. They entered.

The small room had curving walls and a coved ceiling. The hot still air smelled of newsprint, cigarettes, talc, and stale perfume. Photos of movie stars adorned every wall. The only furniture was a plump armchair, a tall skinny bookcase, and a dressing table on which sat a large bottle of Arpège. Lily wondered if Doreen had a wealthy admirer.

Mrs. Potter pointed out the radiator, where stockings, silk panties, and a lace brassiere had been left to dry. “Does this look like the room of a girl who isn’t coming back? Or that?” She indicated the dressing table, where cold creams and potions lay next to a tortoiseshell brush.

“Well, that about covers it.” Mrs. Potter began herding Lily out.

“Please,” Lily said. “I’d like to stay here until I find Kitty. I’m new to the city and—”

Mrs. Potter crossed her arms. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“But I’m a family friend. And you said the rent’s paid through the month.”

Mrs. Potter said nothing.
She wants me to offer her money,
Lily realized.

“What did Kitty pay you?” she asked.

“Twe—eh, excuse me, thirty-five dollars a month.”

She’s just bumped the price up fifteen dollars,
Lily fumed. But she reached for her wallet, realizing that Kitty’s room was the perfect headquarters for her mission. The landlady counted the bills, then folded and tucked them inside her brassiere.

“Where did she sleep?” Lily said, looking around.

Mrs. Potter gave a short bark. “Ain’t you never seen a Murphy bed before?”

She walked to the far wall and threw open a cupboard door, revealing an upright bed. With one tug, it unfolded into the room. The sheets were crisp and bluish white, covered with a clean wool blanket. Mrs. Potter pulled a pillow from the closet and tossed it onto the bed.

“There you go, fit as a fiddle. Maybe you’d like to have a little rest before coming downstairs. Bathroom’s at the other end of the hall.”

“No, actually I…”

But Mrs. Potter was already closing the door behind her.

Lily figured she’d wash her face, then fetch her suitcase and change into fresh clothes before meeting Kitty’s roommates. She wanted to make a good first impression.

She walked to the narrow bed and sat down. Up close, the blanket was thin, its satin trim fraying. The box springs groaned in a metallic woe-is-me. The throw rug over the hardwood floor was worn where many hopeful girls had trod a path from the bed to the vanity table.

The room’s genteel poverty contrasted sharply with Mrs. Croggan’s boasts about her daughter taking Hollywood by storm. Kitty had written home of screen tests, drama workshops, and star-studded premieres. Of dancing at the Cocoanut Grove, wearing designer gowns loaned by Adrian. Of the studio contract that kept her too busy for a visit home. Of how she’d lightened her hair, learned how to shape her brows, saunter across a room, paint her eyes. Of the casting director who’d raised one bored eyebrow at her name and christened her Kitty Hayden.

So this was the reality.

The hum of the radio downstairs, the distant voices, the roof over her head after two days of travel, produced a strange lethargy. Lily knew she should call Mrs. Croggan to tell her Doreen still hadn’t turned up. Instead, she kicked off her heels, stretched out, and was asleep before she knew it.

Lily woke up sweaty and hot, drool crusting the side of her mouth, her suit creased. Pushing herself up on one elbow, she saw that the light outside the window was different now, velvety at the edges. The purple mountains rose in silhouette against the hills like a landscape on a Japanese screen. Something intoxicating bloomed below. Jasmine? Honeysuckle? It made her swoony, like she’d ingested some of Coleridge’s opium. She opened the door and almost tripped over her suitcase.

After washing up with a bar of Lifebuoy, Lily hung her clothes on spare hangers. She tossed her heels into the closet, then decided to wear them downstairs. Prodding shoe boxes with a bare foot, she found one right away. Then her toes brushed against something soft and furry. Lily felt it move.

She screamed and jumped back, expecting a rodent to run out. When nothing came, she peered cautiously into the closet and saw a toy ape. She pulled it out. It was about eighteen inches tall, covered with coarse fur, and wearing a remarkably lifelike expression. Lily examined its glassy doll eyes.

“I could have sworn it moved,” she murmured.